Dead By the Encore
by greysnyper
Summary: Is your destination Heaven or Hell?


The deadly string of words a chant—doubled, two voices level and yet grating like misplaced thunder in the sky. Goku thinks he's only heard such tension on one occasion, but it plays like déjà vu. He would have only encountered it on the mountain, and his life before Sanzo feels like a dream now.

Sanzo is one of the two, murmuring. And how this example of true concentration appears to the boy, it's as if Goku doesn't exist at all anymore.

He knows otherwise, though. The Priest has made sure of that.

_I need one thing from you, Monkey._

They are at the final door. They have made it this far, and there is just a single obstacle left.

"Stand aside," Sanzo had told the dark figure. "This is bigger than you."

The slow twining of a smile, the glitter of glass as the shadow lifts his head. The words that completely disarm Goku by the way they slide through the air like mindful clouds, drifting feathers or a knife in his weak body.

Despite what anyone ever says about Goku's origins, he's always had such a weak body.

"Just because you believe that, doesn't make it truth, Kouryuu-Kun," something black had spoken. "I've met him on the road, and I've killed him."

_Buddha._

But Ni Jianyi is not bright or as brilliant as even the paper Goku had caught Sanzo quietly folding the day before last.

What had Sanzo been doing, then? The Monkey's thoughts hang.

_Nothing._

It would be comprehendible to believe the tattered page still sitting on the patio of the inn's garden. Sanzo doesn't know that Goku had pocketed the paper after the Priest had gotten annoyed and left. 

The boy's wounds have yet to open enough to spill onto the fiery paper.

"Shi—"coughs Gojyo, shuddering as he comes to consciousness again. Hakkai had said that it was bad, but still does not move as frantically as he sometimes does.

Dire, but…

Goku doesn't think that Hakkai would allow himself to be distracted even by Sanzo's battle if Gojyo were dying.

The Healer is hushing, almost too quietly to be heeded by the Sprite. 

Goku doesn't look to see that Hakkai's eyes are also fixated like his; tense but deathly silent, a hand numbly reassuring his long-time friend recovering on the ground.

"Sanzo, is…"

"Shhh," repeats Hakkai, hardly trying to maintain Gojyo's sprawl as the other shifts against his deep wounds to _see_.

"Shit," hisses the Sprite. "Shit, that guy's…guy's nuts."

Goku would agree if Gojyo is referring to Sanzo's opponent. Two Priests, or…one Priest against someone who once was a Priest. The private chanting of sutras, though Goku doesn't know if sutras can be used in this way.

It should mean that the real Sanzo would win. In a fair world, the four travelers ought not be needed, either. No monsters, no broken families and no Priest on a mountain, though Goku believes that a fair world would also see him locked away.

He doesn't think he'll ever remember why.

"Do something," Gojyo growls, shifting against Hakkai. His tattered, bloody hand is reaching up, groping for Hakkai's collar. "God, do something."

Hakkai barely shakes his head. "I can't," he murmurs, as if afraid of speaking louder than the sutras.

The Sprite makes a sound in the back of his throat, desperate and disgusted. "You can end this," he wheezes.

In the energy beside him, Goku feels something stir; a slight rousing of aura, which he names as Hakkai's. The Healer, though, removes Gojyo's slick fingers from his shirt and clasps them in his own.

"No, I can't," he asserts.

_When I read a sutra, it's not for the dead…_

"He's…he'll kill him."

Goku watches as Ni Jiyani continues to speak, voice mingling with Sanzo's in a way that feels completely wrong to the boy. And each moment shows no change in the dark figure's stance, tone or curve of lip. There's enjoyment happening, and Gojyo is completely right.

Sanzo will die.

"Goku," gasps the wounded Sprite. "Shit, don't…just stare."

_I need one thing from you, Monkey._

"Wait," Goku murmurs, eyes fixed ahead at how Sanzo continues to chant. Goku's senses seem keener than ever, and each word is like an echo trapped in his head. Gojyo's blood is a tang in the air beneath Goku. Sanzo is folding clammy hands that hint of forgotten gun smoke, straining. "He told me to wait."

And Goku would. Until the end of this meeting, the end of the day or until the end of another five hundred years.

"Sanzo's going to die, Goku!" Blood, spilling down the corner of Gojyo's lips.

"Yes," Hakkai concludes, as if the fact is unavoidable.

"He told me to wait," the boy says, fiercely trying to ignore the sting in his eyes, a dead bird remembered from the dreams he's not sure he's lived or not.

_One thing from you…_

The folded paper is starting to make sense. A brilliant trick, flying away until it crashes. Until Sanzo does eventually and unavoidably lose the words he needs to say, as if in living; rendered to silence. 

Ni Jiyani: bringing out the true nature of Genjo Sanzo until he is swallowed up—consumed.

_Watch._

Goku will wait, obediently. He will make himself watch, and—

_—if it suits you, call my name._

Sanzo's stare, the same on the last day as it had been on the first.

_Call me back._

Sanzo... 

"Sanzo."


End file.
